Posts Tagged ‘energy prices’

I’ve been seeing articles about how “vulnerable” our electrical power grid has become to various potential crises. And we’re finally starting to get to the root CAUSE of the REAL crisis. In short, it is the “Crisis’-in-Chief” who also goes by the name Barack Hussein Obama.

Note how this article begins by blathering on about “the polar vortex.” And then see how – by the time the average reader has probably switched his/her brain off – you see the paragraph that says:

The electrical system’s duress was a direct result of the polar vortex, the cold air mass that settled over the nation. But it exposed a more fundamental problem. There is a growing fragility in the U.S. electricity system, experts warn, the result of the shutdown of coal-fired plants, reductions in nuclear power, a shift to more expensive renewable energy and natural gas pipeline constraints. The result is likely to be future price shocks. And they may not be temporary.

So allow me to simply restate the main point: the problem that has caused your electricity bill to soar to never-before-seen heights – and STAY THERE FOREVER – is your stupid decision to elect and then re-elect Barack Obama and a frankly Demonic bureauCrat party (which is what “Democrat” actually stands for). It was Obama’s dictate – cheered on by worshipful DemoCrats, to bankrupt the coal plants that provided HALF America’s electricity and force them to shut down, to kill nuclear power, to shift to these extravagant and financially ruinous “green” energies so that the rich liberals who bought and invested in these boondoggles could gorge on the pig trough of public money.

I want you to understand before you read the LA Times’ spin: I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD HAPPEN. I told you it would happen before you elected Obama and said, “I hope they find out about this … before they make the biggest mistake of their lives.”

When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal…under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket…even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I’m capping greenhouse gasses, coal power plants, natural gas…you name it…whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retro-fit their operations.

I pointed out that the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have billions of tons of the stuff. And Obama made it not only useless to America’s national security and economic prosperity but actually a HANDICAP to them.

And now you get to pay for Obama’s ruinous policies.

I’m stating as a FACT that the LA Times is a biased piece of dishonest propaganda. As an example, when they talk about “the last decade” and begin their dating with “2006” they don’t bother to tell you that that was the year that Democrats – having lied to the American people – took over both the House and the Senate. Back then, EVERYTHING was George Bush’s fault because he was the president and he was a Republican and NOTHING could be the fault of Nancy Pelosi’s liberal lordship over the House and Harry Reid’s liberal tyranny in the Senate. And of course now EVERYTHING is the Republican House’s fault and NOTHING is the president’s fault or the still-there Harry Reid’s fault. The first thing Pelosi and Reid and the Democrats began doing was imposing energy insanity on America – as I documented. But given that the LA Times is staffed with propagandist liars who spin the news rather than report it, I want you to note that even THESE Goebbels are admitting reality now:

As temperatures plunged to 16 below zero in Chicago in early January and set record lows across the eastern U.S., electrical system managers implored the public to turn off stoves, dryers and even lights or risk blackouts.

A fifth of all power-generating capacity in a grid serving 60 million people went suddenly offline, as coal piles froze, sensitive electrical equipment went haywire and utility operators had trouble finding enough to keep power plants running. The wholesale price of electricity skyrocketed to nearly $2 per kilowatt hour, more than 40 times the normal rate. The price hikes cascaded quickly down to consumers. Robert Thompson, who lives in the suburbs of Allentown, Pa., got a $1,250 bill for January.

“I thought, how am I going to pay this?” he recalled. “This was going to put us in the poorhouse.”

The bill was reduced to about $750 after Thompson complained, but Susan Martucci, a part-time administrative assistant in Allentown, got no relief on her $654 charge. “It was ridiculous,” she said.

The electrical system’s duress was a direct result of the polar vortex, the cold air mass that settled over the nation. But it exposed a more fundamental problem. There is a growing fragility in the U.S. electricity system, experts warn, the result of the shutdown of coal-fired plants, reductions in nuclear power, a shift to more expensive renewable energy and natural gas pipeline constraints. The result is likely to be future price shocks. And they may not be temporary.

One recent study predicts the cost of electricity in California alone could jump 47% over the next 16 years, in part because of the state’s shift toward more expensive renewable energy.

“We are now in an era of rising electricity prices,” said Philip Moeller, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who said the steady reduction in generating capacity across the nation means that prices are headed up. “If you take enough supply out of the system, the price is going to increase.”

In fact, the price of electricity has already been rising over the last decade, jumping by double digits in many states, even after accounting for inflation. In California, residential electricity prices shot up 30% between 2006 and 2012, adjusted for inflation, according to Energy Department figures. Experts in the state’s energy markets project the price could jump an additional 47% over the next 15 years.

The problems confronting the electricity system are the result of a wide range of forces: new federal regulations on toxic emissions, rules on greenhouse gases, state mandates for renewable power, technical problems at nuclear power plants and unpredictable price trends for natural gas. Even cheap hydro power is declining in some areas, particularly California, owing to the long-lasting drought.

“Everywhere you turn, there are proposals and regulations to make prices go higher,” said Daniel Kish, senior vice president at the Institute for Energy Research. “The trend line is up, up, up. We are going into uncharted territory.”

New emissions rules on mercury, acid gases and other toxics by the Environmental Protection Agency are expected to result in significant losses of the nation’s coal-generated power, historically the largest and cheapest source of electricity. Already, two dozen coal generating units across the country are scheduled for decommissioning. When the regulations go into effect next year, 60 gigawatts of capacity — equivalent to the output of 60 nuclear reactors — will be taken out of the system, according to Energy Department estimates.

Moeller, the federal energy commissioner, warns that these rapid changes are eroding the system’s ability to handle unexpected upsets, such as the polar vortex, and could result in brownouts or even blackouts in some regions as early as next year. He doesn’t argue against the changes, but believes they are being phased in too quickly.

The federal government appears to have underestimated the impact as well. An Environmental Protection Agency analysis in 2011 had asserted that new regulations would cause few coal plant retirements. The forecast on coal plants turned out wrong almost immediately, as utilities decided it wasn’t economical to upgrade their plants and scheduled them for decommissioning.

The lost coal-generating capacity is being replaced largely with cleaner natural gas, but the result is that electricity prices are linked to a fuel that has been far more volatile in price than coal. The price of natural gas now stands at about $4.50 per million BTUs, more expensive than coal. Plans to export massive amounts of liquefied natural gas, the rapid construction of gas-fired power plants and the growing trend to convert the U.S. heavy truck fleet to natural gas could exert even more upward pressure on prices. Malcolm Johnson, a former Shell Oil gas executive who now teaches the Oxford Princeton Program, a private energy training company, said prices could move toward European price levels of $10.

“When those natural gas prices start going up again, we will feel it in the way of higher electricity prices,” warns James Sweeney, a Stanford University energy expert.

The loss of coal is being exacerbated by problems at the nation’s nuclear plants. Five reactors have been taken out of operation in the last few years, mainly due to technical problems. Additional shutdowns are under consideration.

At the same time, 30 states have mandates for renewable energy that will require the use of more expensive wind and solar energy. Since those sources depend on the weather, they require backup generation — a hidden factor that can add significantly to the overall cost to consumers.

Nowhere are the forces more in play than in California, which has the nation’s most aggressive mandate for renewable power. Major utilities must obtain 33% of their power from renewable sources by 2020, not counting low-cost hydropower from giant dams in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

In some cases, the renewable power costs as much as twice the price of electricity from new gas-fired power plants. Newer facilities are more competitive and improved technology should hold down future electricity prices, said former FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff, now a San Francisco attorney.

But San Francisco-based Energy + Environmental Economics, a respected consultant, has projected that the cost of California’s electricity is likely to increase 47% over the next 16 years, adjusted for inflation, in part because of the renewable power mandate and heavy investments in transmission lines.

The mandate is just one market force. California has all but phased out coal-generated electricity. The state lost the output of San Onofre’s two nuclear reactors and is facing the shutdown of 19 gas-fired power plants along the coast because of new state-imposed ocean water rules by 2020.

“Our rates are increasing because of all of these changes that are occurring and will continue to occur as far out as we can see,” said Phil Leiber, chief financial officer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “Renewable power has merit, but unfortunately it is more costly and is one of the drivers of our rates.”

“While renewables are coming down in cost, they are still more expensive,” said Russell Garwacki, manager of pricing design and research at Southern California Edison. The company is imposing a 10% price hike this year to catch up with increased costs in the past.

Officials at the California Public Utilities Commission, responsible for setting utility rates, dispute predictions of large-scale electricity price hikes in the near future. Edward Randolph, head of the PUC’s energy division, said price increases were not likely to exceed the rate of inflation, though the commission has refused to spell out the data on which it bases its projections. In any case, while California already has some of the highest hourly rates for electricity in the nation, the average consumer in the state pays bills that are below the national average because overall electricity use is so low.

The push to wean California off fossil fuels for electricity could cause a consumer backlash as the price for doing so becomes increasingly apparent, warns Alex Leupp, an executive with the Northern California Power Agency, a nonprofit that generates low-cost power for 15 agencies across the state. The nonprofit was formed decades ago during a rebellion against the PUC and the high prices that resulted from its regulations.

“If power gets too expensive, there will be a revolt,” Leupp said. “If the state pushes too fast on renewables before the technology is viable, it could set back the environmental goals we all believe in at the end of the day.”

Will there be a revolt? Probably not. We live in times that are even MORE dishonest than Hitler’s and Stalin’s because our leaders are advantaged with the latest skills in mass media manipulation and our media outlets are more propagandistic than Joseph Goebbels or TASS ever was. Democrats – liars to the cores of their beings – will simply find their equivalent of “Jews” (Republicans, energy companies, insurance companies, rich people, etc.) to slander. Bad people invariably believe lies – and we have become a bad people.

Obama declared war on coal, and with the aid of the stupid American people who frankly deserve to freeze in the dark, coal was forced to surrender.

We won’t get these assets back for YEARS if we can get them back at all, ye stupid dumbasses. Even if you vote Republican, the investors who would bring cheap, efficient coal back on line now know that we’re only one election away from a fascist who will bankrupt them. They won’t DARE invest in coal again: because the moral idiot American people elected and then re-elected a fascist and they know that it can happen again (and may in 2016 in the pantsuited form of Hillary Clinton).

So you CAN count on the fact that Barack Hussein Obama has permanently caused American energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket.” Amazingly, he did so in a country that has more coal than any other nation on the face of the earth.

In terms of energy and in terms of so many other things, Obama made the richest nation in the history of the world IMPOVERISHED.

And not only that, but the integrity of our grid is now in open question: having abolished coal, with NOTHING to take its place in terms of either price OR supply, we don’t have enough power to provide so we’re going to have more crashes and more devastating crashes in our electrical grid.

And who is going to suffer the most from this moral idiocy? The rich? They’ll buy themselves generators. And even steep increases will hardly dent the percentage of income they dedicate to their heating and cooling bills.

You stupid liberals. Here is another example of how you afflicted the poor who will now – thanks to the Democrat Party – have to pay unprecedented percentages of their meager household incomes on their energy because you made their rates soar.

And the only other thing you can count upon in God damn America as Democrats wage economic warfare on the poorest among us is that those very poor are ignorant enough and depraved enough to keep believing the lies of the Democrats who are most oppressing them.

Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!” (Revelation 6:6).

Messiah Obama wisely understands that we need sky high energy prices to force us to abandon lifestyles that are bad for the world. That way he can keep the promise he made to the earth: “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” The earth is much bigger than your little children, so Obama can break his competing promises to you and your family. In fact, your evil if you want him to keep his promises that would prevent him from his messianic duties of healing the whole world.

A gallon of gas was $1.79 when Obama took over from that terrible George Bush. Unfortunately, it has gone up about 110% under Obama, to $3.88 this week. Damn that Bush devil! Can you believe the way he actually wanted to keep the cost of our energy low, so people could do awful stuff like drive to work? The half of us who sponge off the other half don’t need work, so why should the half we sponge off of?

We already voted for the “hope and change” of $9 a gallon gas in the wonderful fundamentally transformative election of 2008. And how dare people get angry about that now!!!

Because Obama in his blessed wisdom knows that most Americans are far, far too stupid to understand anything that happens gradually, such as gas rising to the $8 a gallon levels like they are in Europe. And it doesn’t really matter how much the American people suffer. Not compared to healing earth and lowering the seas like Moses. Obama will be better than Moses; he’ll make the level of the whole ocean change!!!!

And food? So what if the price of food is going through the roof? Michelle Obama will tell you that you’re too fat anyway. You need to lose a whole lot of weight, and her husband’s policies will give you the help you need. You shouldn’t be allowed to eat half as much food as you eat, anyway. They don’t get to eat in North Korea, and it’s a socialist worker’s Utopia. So why should it be any different in the worker’s Utopia your Dear Leader is trying to create for you here? North Koreans are 5.3 inches (13.5 cm) shorter and 30 pounds (13.5 kg) lighter than those fat overfed capitalist South Korean bastards. And American kids should be as short and gaunt as their fellow socialist travellers.

I sure hope I’m not putting too much crap in the sandwich I’m feeding you. Because excrement is a precious commodity in North Korea. And it should be just as precious here.

But just in case you think the hope and change of Obama’s fundamental transformation is already more than you can bear, it gets even better. The cost of having a roof over your head is skyrocketing, too. Which might help you not worry so much about the price of food and the price of fuel.

Record numbers of Americans are paying more than half of their pretax income for rental housing, according to a new study.

The study, by the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, found that the recession’s toll on incomes had increased more families’ housing-cost burdens. Almost 26% of renters spend more than half of their income on rent and utilities. Another 26.2% spend 30% to 50% of their incomes.

The study’s findings are similar to the findings of the Center for Housing Policy, which found that working families, both renters and homeowners, were spending a larger proportion of their income on housing. [..]

Lower-income renters have historically struggled to find affordable housing and have paid a disproportionate share of their income in rent. But, according to the study, that problem is moving up the income ladder with more lower-middle-income renters and middle-income renters paying 30% to 50% of their incomes for rent and utilities. […]

The study offers the latest in a series of grim statistics about the scarcity of rental housing, especially for the working poor. The supply has not kept up with demand in part because of a shortage of apartments, a key source of new rentals. Developers cut back on such projects when the economy deteriorated in 2009, which drove down vacancies and boosted rents. Analysts say they expect rents to keep climbing as developers try to ramp up new projects and catch up with demand.

In many areas, the demand is driven by families who lost their homes to foreclosure during the housing bust and ended up searching for rentals. Meanwhile, as the job market recovers, more newly employed young adults appear to be seeking their own apartments instead of living with their parents, putting even more upward pressure on rental rates, according to one of the study’s researchers.

But don’t worry. Pretty soon, thanks to Obama’s financial policies, you’ll have cash. Lots and lots of cash. Wheelbarrows full of it, in fact.

Remember back when Jimmy Carter was urging us all to wear sweaters and turn down our thermostats because his failed energy policies had us in long communist-proletariat-peasant-bread-line-style lines for shockingly expensive gas and fuel oil?

Well, as we keep telling you over and over again, it’s Welcome back, Carter all over again.

Shivering in the dark and freezing at night was not an answer to America’s energy needs then, and it isn’t one now.

Speaking of “now,” Obama’s got a new, modern version of Carter’s “Energy? We don’t need no stinkin’ energy!” policies:

“I know some of these big guys, they’re all still driving their big SUVs. You know, they got their big monster trucks and everything. You’re one of them? Well, now, here’s my point. If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting eight miles a gallon–(laughter)–you may have a big family, but it’s probably not that big. How many you have? Ten kids, you say? Ten kids? (Laughter.) Well, you definitely need a hybrid van then. (Laughter.) . . .So, like I said, if you’re getting eight miles a gallon you may want to think about a trade-in. You can get a great deal. I promise you, GM or Ford or Chrysler, they’re going to be happy to give you a deal on something that gets you better gas mileage.”

One of the few remaining decent newspapers in the country wrote that Obama sans teleprompter line up this way:

The transcript shows that Obama got lots of laughs. But presumably he was speaking to a friendly audience–to people who regard the burning of gasoline as sinful and who, at least in theory, are attracted to the idea of $8-a-gallon gasoline.

People like that, to paraphrase Pauline Kael, live in a rather special world. For most Americans (we Manhattan residents are a notable exception), driving is a day-to-day necessity, and high gas prices are a constant source of economic pain. Sure, if you’re driving a guzzler, it might make sense to trade it in. But not everyone has the money lying around to buy a new car at the drop of a hat. And owners of dinky cars and hybrids still have to buy gasoline for them.

One might point out in the president’s defense that he is putting his money–haha, we mean your money–where his mouth is. Last week, as the Detroit News reported, Obama announced a plan “to ‘green’ the federal fleet”:

“I’m directing our departments and our agencies to make sure 100 percent of the vehicles they buy are fuel-efficient or clean energy cars and trucks by 2015.Not 50 percent, not 75 percent–100 percent of our vehicles,” Obama said.

Well, maybe not quite 100%. The News also reports that “some federal vehicles for law enforcement and security purposes will be exempt”–among them “the GM-built Cadillac presidential limousine and other vehicles in the motorcade.”

Then again, Obama does atone by spending a lot of time in golf carts.

President Obama’s answer to the question about high gas prices is reminiscent of candidate Obama’s 2008 disquisition on the “bitter clingers” of Pennsylvania, although the latter was not meant for public consumption. There’s little doubt that he believes these things, that he is a creature of the liberal self-styled elite. But if he doesn’t get better at concealing it, voters may think about a trade-in next November.

It’s not that Obama is just unrealistic and completely out of touch with America’s needs in relation to his far-leftist socialist radical redistributionist policies, it’s that he is simply factually wrong. An article titled “Obama fudges on oil production; snarks at big families” deals with a number of remarks Obama made during the appearance immortalized in the quote above that are simply wrong, period.

But let’s just deal with one of them, the hybrid van. There ISN’T a hybrid van. And there won’t be one any time soon:

And finally, President Obama was asked about rising fuel prices at a town hall last week and his answer raised some conservatives’ eyebrows. Now car experts are weighing in as well.

The president said — quote — “If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting eight miles a gallon, you may have a big family, but it’s probably not that big. How many [kids do] you have? Ten kids, you say? Ten kids? Well, you definitely need a hybrid van then.”

However, Edward Loh of Motor Trend Magazine says a 12-person hybrid passenger van does not exist because — quote — “for hybrids to be effective, weight must be kept down. It wouldn’t be feasible to have a vehicle that large also be a hybrid.”

And Edmunds.com agrees, saying there are no hybrid vans that accommodate 10 or more people.

Obama keeps mocking us. We’re the bitter clingers he vilified and continues to vilify every day. But neither he nor the liberal moral idiots nor the liberal moral idiot propagandists who call themselves “journalists” realize the joke is constantly on him.

Within two days of Bush’s signing the executive order, the price of oil dropped from nearly $145 a barrel to $130.73 a barrel. And within four days, it had dropped to $128.88. And Harry Reid wants to take credit for this drop in price with his incredibly airheaded speculation bill that never really had a chance of overcoming a filibuster to begin with?

In the House, Democrats are putting the energy bill on the “suspension calender” in a move that will require a 2/3 majority to pass any legislation, but which prevents the Republicans from adding ANY amendments to allow for drilling on federal lands or contribute in any way.

Democrats are so paranoid that a drilling amendment might be introduced that they would rather scuttle any meaningful vote whatsoever.

Why did President Bush lift the ban?:

The White House announced today that President Bush will lift an executive order banning offshore oil drilling, a move aimed at stepping up pressure on Congress to end the prohibition it imposed in 1981.On July 14, President Bush ended the executive ban on offshore drilling. The very next day saw the price of oil take the biggest drop in 17 years.

At the time George Bush ended the ban on offshore drilling, oil cost $147 a barrel. Oil had become more and more and more expensive in a staggering trend. But from the moment – the moment – Bush ended the ban, oil prices immediately began to go down in a constant trend as the industry reacted to the idea that more oil would be available. Within six months, the price of a barrel of oil had gone down to $37.

But a new president came along, and the market realized that he had an anti-business, anti-oil and anti-growth policy. And the markets reacted accordingly.

The event was not covered by the press, but sources confirmed the exchange to Politico.

But according to multiple people in the room, Clinton, surprisingly, agreed with Bush on many oil and gas issues, including criticism of delays in permitting offshore since last year’s Gulf of Mexico spill.

“Bush said all the things you’d expect him to say” on oil and gas issues, said Jim Noe, senior vice president at Hercules Offshore and executive director of the pro-drilling Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition. But Clinton added, “You’d be surprised to know that I agree with all that,” according to Noe and others in the room.

Clinton said there are “ridiculous delays in permitting when our economy doesn’t need it,” according to Noe and others.

“That was the most surprising thing they said,” Noe said.

The two former presidents both generally agreed on the need to get offshore drilling workers back on the job.

Clinton and Bush also agreed on the need for more domestic shale gas production, with Clinton noting that it has been done safely for years in his home state of Arkansas.

Obama gave a speech in which he took credit for Bush and Clinton-era policies even as his own policies were strangling oil production. And even Clinton had to agree that Obama’s policies were ridiculous and counter-productive.

It’s just a small little part of “No, no, no! Not God bless America, God damn America!”

For the record, it isn’t just Obama’s stupid and morally idiotic energy policies that are creating this self-inflicted open and infectious wound plaguing Americans at every fill-up. There are other stupid and morally idiotic Obama policies at work, too. Obama has seriously devalued the U.S. Dollar with his reckless spending policies. The world oil supply is bought and sold in U.S. dollars. And OPEC sure isn’t going to pay for Obama’s weak dollar. Thus as the value of our dollar goes down, the more worthless dollars it will take to buy a barrel.

We need to get this fool and the fool Democrats out of power. America’s very survival is at stake.

As we speak, in terms of the national average price for gasoline, it will cost you about seventy bucks to fill a 20 gallon tank.

And in the People’s Republic of California – which taxes the hell out of gasoline just like they’re taxing the hell out of everything else – it’s actually a fair amount worse. Just in case you needed more proof that Democrats and sky-high gasoline prices lovingly walk hand-in-hand.

When George Bush was president – even though Democrats were in control of both the House and the Senate – high gas prices were “Bush’s fault.” It happened during his watch, and that was all the Democrats and their mainstream media intellectual soulmates needed. And of course it doesn’t matter how lousy things are under Obama’s watch, because the Bush presidency is like the original sin to liberals; it extends backward and forward into eternity, so that all things evil can be attributed to it. Basically that is because government is Democrat’s god, and Bush was a heretic who defiled the only god with whom they have to do.

It didn’t matter that polls showed that Americans overwhelmingly were on the Republicans’ side when they said, “Drill baby, drill.”

“The one thing we fail to talk about is those costs that you don’t see on the bottom line. That is coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick; it’s global warming. It’s ruining our country, it’s ruining our world. We’ve got to stop using fossil fuel.”

“So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

And the result of shutting down plants that produce half our electricity in Obama’s own words:

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”

OBAMA: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that, ehh, this is such a shock t’American pocketbooks is not a good thing. Uh, but if we take some steps right now t’, uh, help people make the adjustment — first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly US automakers.

What Obama would have said if he wasn’t a total idiot and a disgrace to the presidency is, “Of COURSE high gas prices won’t hurt us! That would kill our economy! Just what kind of idiot are you for even asking?!?!?”

Obama didn’t say that because he thinks high gas prices actually will help America. That’s just the kind of incompetent disgrace to the American presidency that he is.

Fossil fuels are bad. Using fossil fuels are bad. Inexpensive energy is bad (at least as long as the price doesn’t rise too soon at any one time and make Americans react like frogs placed in boiling water) because it encourages Americans to keep using cheap energy when they should be using the expensive and inefficient energy sources that Democrats want to force them to use. Which means being able to afford driving to work or heating your home is bad.

Nancy Pelosi’s failed policy, Harry Reid’s failed policy and Barack Obama’s failed policy are off-limits in the media, however. You really don’t hear any stories on that stuff. Our media “gatekeepers” have slammed the gates shut on that angle.

Last year – and that was before the crisis in Libya and before the “evil” Republicans took over the House of Representatives after two years of abject Obama failure to govern, I pointed out that gasoline prices had actually skyrocketed on Obama’s watch. And dang oh boy hooeeeh they’ve skyrocketed since. Which is to say that the fact of the matter is that the crisis in Libya or in the Middle East really doesn’t have anything to do with this. It’s the fool we had in office a year ago when prices were skyrocketing who is the same fool we’ve got now that is the “crisis.”

These people are getting exactly what they want. And by “exactly what they want,” I mean the destruction of the American economy so a purely socialist system can be erected in the ashes.

Obama and his handpicked energy secretary are getting exactly what they want, and exactly what Obama said he would do if elected. The same Democrats who demonically demonized Bush for high oil prices have all along wanted the price of oil to “necessarily skyrocket” so that automakers will be forced to manufacture little clown cars and the American people will be forced to buy those clown cars.

They want to say, “Oil is too expensive and too unstable.” We’ve got to spend hunderds and hundreds of billions on an utterly stupid agenda such as high speed rail, solar panels, wind, etcetera. And we’ve ultimately got to take cars and the freedom that comes with mobility away from the people so that we can better control and shape them into what we want them to be.

“The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”

We’ve got them in their own words. We’ve got them telling us that they WANT high gas prices and expensive energy. We’ve got them doing everything they can to prevent any and all American drilling.

And yet Democrats agreed with this agenda and voted for these people and put them into power.

Democrats want seven dollar a gallon and higher gasoline prices? Why not let them have it right now. Isn’t that only appropriate?

And with national gasoline prices at the halfway point, it seems like the perfect solution:

EVERY SINGLE TIME A DEMOCRAT FILLS HIS OR HER TANK, THEY SHOULD FILL A REPUBLICAN’S TANK AT THEIR EXPENSE.

It’s a win-win. Republicans get the inexpensive oil they want to fuel their cars and businesses, and Democrats get to go the way of the Dodo bird all the faster – which is exactly what they want for the rest of America. And by extension, every single Democrat should pay the highest tax rates on every single Obama tax hikes. They want it for others; let them pay it themselves.

So tell you what, Democrats. And I mean every single one of you. Fill our tanks, which will bring your costs to the minimum price of what Obama’s handpicked energy secretary said was “the goal.”

Or just shut the hell up and get the hell out of our lives, you hypocrites.

If you see Obama covered in oil, it’s because a gang of liberals shoved him overboard into the sticky muck.

It appears that things are really getting desperate for the left. Leftwing journalists, who have always been such reliable propagandists for Democrats, might finally be at that point where they realize if they don’t report the truth, their viewers will go to those that will.

From the beginning, the effort has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials, as well as BP. As a result, officials and experts say, the damage to the coastline and wildlife has been worse than it might have been if the response had been faster and orchestrated more effectively.

“The present system is not working,” Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said Thursday at a hearing in Washington devoted to assessing the spill and the response. Oil had just entered Florida waters, Senator Nelson said, adding that no one was notified at either the state or local level, a failure of communication that echoed Mr. Bonano’s story and countless others along the Gulf Coast.

“The information is not flowing,” Senator Nelson said. “The decisions are not timely. The resources are not produced. And as a result, you have a big mess, with no command and control.”

They were supposed to be better prepared. When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska in 1989, skimmers, booms and dispersants were in short supply for the response, which was led by a consortium of oil companies in which BP was the majority stakeholder.

A year later, lawmakers passed the federal Oil Pollution Act to ensure that plans were in place for oil spills, so the response effort would be quick, with clear responsibilities for everyone involved.

No skimmers were available when the Exxon Valdes ran aground. And – thanks to our fool-in-chief Barry Hussein – when we had a chance to get some much needed assistance to supply much-needed skimmers, Barry apparently thought they said, “We’d like to send you winners” and turned them down fearing they would make him look bad.

Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help.

It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands.

The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: “The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’” said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston.

Now, almost seven weeks later, as the oil spewing from the battered well spreads across the Gulf and soils pristine beaches and coastline, BP and our government have reconsidered.

Had Obama accepted the offer back then and not allowed BP to use illegal dispersants, the oil would have never made landfall 48 miles away.

Today, (a month and half to late) there are US tankers that are steaming to the site with four pairs of modern skimming booms that were airlifted from the Netherlands and should be sucking up oil at the flow site within days.

Each pair can process 5 million gallons of water a day, removing 20,000 tons of oil and sludge.

If those skimmers were in place when they were offered a month ago, each pair could presumably recover 4.4 million barrels of oil. Four pairs of the state of the art skimmers would be able to suck up 17.6 million barrels in a month, although they will not be able to reach the depths of the plumes that are floating away with the illegal dispersants.

Thirteen nations offered to give us help to mitigate this massive disaster. And Obama basically wrote, “To whom it may concern, please to get the hell out of my business” letters to all of them.

Tar blobs began washing up on Florida’s white sand beaches near Pensacola this past weekend. Crude oil has already been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi, and has impacted about 125 miles of Louisiana coastline.

It didn’t have to be this way.
(Reuters)There are miles of floating oil containment boom in warehouse right now and the manufacturer Packgen says it can make lots more on short notice.There’s just one problem… No one will come get it.

Our new Louisiana poll has a lot of data points to show how unhappy voters in the state are with Barack Obama’s handling of the oil spill but one perhaps sums it up better than anything else- a majority of voters there think George W. Bush did a better job with Katrina than Obama’s done dealing with the spill.

50% of voters in the state, even including 31% of Democrats, give Bush higher marks on that question compared to 35% who pick Obama.

Since Obama was elected, I’ve been saying that a third of American voters would continue to support Obama even if he led us into the stone-age-like conditions that Kim Il Jong has led his people into. We could be living in the dark and freezing at night, and scratching our own fecal matter from the ground in order to have something to burn, and this group of people would still adore their Dear Leader.

And what is Obama’s response to this terrible crisis? Well, his golf game certainly hasn’t suffered in any way. He’s been very busy doing fundraisers so his fellow liberal buddies can have a chance to stay in office. He got a nice vacation in.

Oh, and he gave a speech. A speech in which Obama sought to seize advantage of the disaster in order to impose his monstrous and disastrous cap-and-trade system that would cause energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket.” Obama is no leader who can possibly solve this crisis; he is rather a demagogic community organizer who can only seek to ideologically benefit from the crisis.

And MSNBC and the New York Times aren’t the only liberals who realize the disastrous and disgraceful failure that Obama has been. Longtime liberal Democrat political strategist James Carville realized it. Liberal journalist and former Clinton administration public affairs hack Kirsten Powers realized it. I’m sure a lot of other liberal media pukes are realizing that we’re coming to the place where they either throw Obama overboard for his incompetence, or demonstrate that they themselves are clearly incompetent in their analysis.

The utter lack of leadership and hands-on management in responding to the Gulf oil crisis is an embarrassment to the President, as well as a hideous disaster for the Gulf and those who live near it. Can Obama’s first-ever Oval Office address make the damage to his standing go away? I seriously doubt it. Obama has failed in his duty to protect the homeland through sheer inexperience, incompetence, and indolence. The man who has planty of time for golf, hoops, parties, and fund-raisers is asleep at the switch when it comes to making the system respond effectively to an emergency. There is no papering over the spectacle with rhetoric.